Following its establishment, the primary foreign relationships of the PRK were those with Vietnam, Laos, the Soviet Union, and the countries of Eastern Europe. The PRK had only one resident mission in a noncommunist state, the one in India. The PRK also maintained diplomatic relations with about twenty other Third World nations, including Afghanistan, Angola, the Congo, Ethiopia, Libya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Nicaragua, and Panama. In 1980 about thirty countries recognized the PRK seven years later, that number had not changed. In 1987 nearly eighty countries recognized Democratic Kampuchea.

Data as of December 1987